The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the research arm of the U.S. Congress, has issued a report concluding that the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) isn’t doing enough to help federal contractors comply with their affirmative action obligations for veterans protected under the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA). The 45-page report, entitled “Equal Employment Opportunity: Better Assistance and Data Use Could Improve Oversight of Veterans’ Federal Contractor Employment,” was prepared in response to a Congressional request asking GAO to review how OFCCP enforces VEVRAA, and was conducted between October 2020 and May 2022.
Among other things, the report concludes that OFCCP “lacks data on the protected veteran population, which may limit its ability to protect veterans’ rights under VEVRAA.” The report goes on to make seven non-binding recommendations on how OFCCP can improve its VEVRAA oversight, among them clarifying veterans hiring benchmarks and using available data to better approximate the protected veteran population.
Interestingly, the report indicates that OFCCP declined the opportunity to provide comments on GAO’s recommendations, although OFCCP did provide technical comments which GAO indicates were incorporated “as appropriate.”
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.